


We are always halfway to somewhere

by renjutori



Category: Last Survivors Series - Susan Beth Pfeffer
Genre: Behind the Scenes, Canon Character of Color, Canon Compliant, Developing Relationship, F/M, Introspection, Religious Discussion, Semi-Slow Burn, takes place during the third book
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-18
Updated: 2018-12-18
Packaged: 2019-09-22 02:51:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,797
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17051660
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/renjutori/pseuds/renjutori
Summary: It starts slowly.





	We are always halfway to somewhere

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Ljparis](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ljparis/gifts).



> Happy Yuletide~ Have a wonderful winter and a wonderful New Year!

  


* * *

  


> _I want alchemy from this ocean,_  
>  _not these metaphors of endlessness._  
>  _I have driven two hundred miles in a rented car_  
>  _for alchemy. Past the Burnt Woods_  
>  _and the Chitwood Bridge. Over_  
>  _the 45th Parallel marked by a small sign._  
>  _They are all small signs, he’d say—_  
>  _but he’d mean something literal_  
>  _about the footlong oblong, the green_  
>  _behind white lettering. While I_  
>  _imagine grass limp in the equatorial sun,_  
>  _snow adrift at the pole—equidistance  
>  _compressed to a metal slate.__
> 
> _Like alchemy, endlessness is a fiction._  
>  _We are always halfway to somewhere._  
>  _I want more than transmutation:_  
>  _I want the god I pray to to be real._  
> 
> 
> —"Beyond the 45th Parallel”, Geri Doran

  


* * *

  


He still prays, sometimes. It’s one of the few things that still feels right. It’s probably not as often as his mother or Father Malrooney would have liked, but the fact that he does it at all after everything—he counts it as a win. And anyway, they’re gone. He tries not to think about that though.

There’s little privacy in this borrowed, stolen house (Mrs. Nesbitt’s, he remembers Mrs. Evans telling them), but when the urge rises in him, itches at his skin from the inside out, he sneaks off to the dining room. What used to be the dining room, he supposes, before whoever was last here absconded with the furniture. Probably for firewood, would be his guess; there’s wood shavings scattered across the floor still. When he kneels, he can feel them digging into him and if he wasn’t in pants, he’d surely have splinters all up his legs by now. He thinks splinters would be worth it, the sign of a miracle, if it meant it was warm enough to be in shorts. It’s a miracle at all that he still believes in God now. Maybe, that kind of miracle could happen too.

Sometimes, Julie will join him, usually when she’s missing the past the most, when the Church was open and nobody was dead and prayer was communal. He suspects she prays on her own too. Everyone here takes what leftovers of privacy they can. Some days, selfishly, he thinks he should tell her to stop praying so much, to take time for herself. She’s grown up from the days when they would argue over stupid things, in the early days when it still seemed like survival was a given, but she’s still a kid. She deserves what little respite she can get. When they get to the convent—he can’t let himself think of it as an if—the majority of what she’ll be doing is praying. 

Other days, though, he thinks they both need to pray as much as they can to get to the convent in the first place.

It happens, late in the afternoon, on one of the occasions when he happens to be alone. He’s opening his eyes, standing up, stretching life back into his stiff limbs, when he finds her watching him. She’s standing outside the doorway, probably here to visit her father and the baby. He watches her back—it’s only fair. For a minute, they’re at a standstill. 

“Didn’t anyone teach you it’s rude to stare?” he snaps, when it becomes clear she’s not going to stop gawking at him. 

She shakes her head, like clearing water from her ears. “Sorry.” And then she’s gone.

He spends the rest of his day helping fix a leak in the roof, so by the time he stumbles onto his mattress in the shared sleeping area, he’s more than tired enough to fall asleep quickly. In the tiny space before slumber though, all he can think of is dark eyes, boring into him.

  


* * *

  


“I’m sorry about the other day,” she says from behind him one week, when she’s visiting again, and he startles. “I haven’t seen a person praying for over a year, so it caught me off guard.”

“It’s fine.” he tells her, turning back to the boxes he was organizing in the pantry. It’s not a necessary task, but there’s nothing else to do. Sometimes he looks back on the days he would be so bored in school, but now, he would probably give anything to be back there, even in math. 

“Alright, I just didn’t want to make you feel unwelcome.” She pauses, and her next words sound like they were phrased carefully, the way his do when he has to say important things. “I know we got off on the wrong foot, I guess.”

“I don’t feel unwelcome.” What else is he supposed to say to that? He’s bad at this sort of talk, even worse when it’s in English. It was the language of school, and police officers, and that was it for him. This small talk, the negotiations of shared space, it’s all so stilted when it’s not in Spanish.

She seems relieved. “Alright. It’s Matt’s birthday tomorrow, and we wanted to celebrate. Nothing large, but my dad and Lisa and the baby were all going to come over, eat as a family. Charlie's coming. You and Julie can come too, if you’d like.” She raises the last bit like it’s a question.

He thinks about it for a second. “Alright.” It would be good for Julie to be around more people close to her age, and for her to get out of the house more.

“I’m glad to hear it. See you then,” she says, and leaves.

It’s nice, the next night. He doesn’t talk much, but it is. It’s not family, not like before everything, and the food portions are the same, but he forgot what the companionship of a large group felt like. Julie seems happy, which is all that really matters.

Miranda’s watching him again.

  


* * *

  


It starts slowly, like the way his room back home used to warm up in the mornings. So cold, at first, that he was loath to drag himself out of bed. Then, when the sun had warmed it enough, tolerable. Pleasant, eventually. It starts with more glances, conversation scattered here and there when she’s passing by, visiting her father.

And then, something shifts. She comes by more often, talks to him more. Sometimes she stops by even when her father is out. After a while he starts to welcome it, look forward to it. Their conversations become longer, slower. It’s all oxygen for him. He hasn’t talked to, _really_ talked to, anyone but Julie for a while now, not since Kevin. He learns small things about her; the way she looks up and to the left when she's embarrassed, the way the grey light plays against her hair when what little sunlight exists cuts through the clouds.

“Prayer is strange to me,” she tells him, of course, after he is done praying one day. She’s not rude enough to interrupt him during, despite what he thought when he first met her. She does sit and watch him, though. It felt strange at first, but oddly, he doesn’t mind. It doesn’t feel like he’s some specimen in a zoo, being ogled at. It feels more like intrigue, the desire to figure something, someone, out. It’s flattering, in its own way.

He walks to the wall, sinks down onto the floor. “I think it is to most non-religious people.”

“Maybe,” she shrugs. “One of my friends, from before. She and her congregation, their reverend told them to give him their food and do nothing but pray. And they did. And they starved to death.”

“That’s not prayer,” he says. “That’s greed.”

She kicks her legs against the table she’s perched on. “What is prayer then, to you? How can you still believe after everything that’s happened?”

It’s a good question. He thinks on it. His mother’s hands, elegant, fingernails neatly trimmed, as they grip a rosary. Candles. His father’s voice. The Sunday meals they would have, where they ate better than they did the rest of the weak. After the asteroid, asking for forgiveness. Wondering what had become of his soul. 

“Hope,” he says finally. “It keeps me thinking that maybe, we’ll make it out of all of this after all. It got me out of New York, after all.”

“Interesting.” He supposes it must be, to her. “I think I feel the same way, but I don’t need prayer for that.”

“What do you need then?” He snaps, rankling at the comparison.

“No, I didn’t mean it like that,” her tone turns apologetic. Somehow, it soothes him. “I think everyone needs something to live for, and for some people it’s religion. I’m just not one of those people.”

“What do you live for then?” He asks, softer than the last time. He thinks it’s softer, anyway. He legitimately wants to know. It’s intrigue.

She hums in thought. “Clean water. Sunlight. The baby. My family.”

“Not me? How exclusive.”

She blinks for a moment, before realizing he’s joking. “And you,” she says, laughing a little. “How could I forget you.” A month ago, it would have felt like a lie. Today, it feels like a gap in the clouds.

  


* * *

  


"I used to swim," she tells him some other time when they’re doing nothing, because there is nothing to be done. He can see it. The rationing takes its toll on everyone, but she doesn’t get out of breath easily like Syl and Julie do when they’re moving supplies. She reminds him of the girls at school who would go for morning runs, delighting in the miracle of muscle and tendon moving in tandem.

"I never learned. No time. My cousins, in San Juan, they always made fun of me." 

She looks at him, serious. "I'll teach you one day, when this is all over. The first day the ice melts on the pond down the road." Her certainty surprises him.

"Okay," he says, humoring her. _If_ this is all over, he doesn't say. When did she become the optimist?

  


* * *

  


It’s a normal day when they kiss. It happens suddenly. One moment, she is talking about one of her old friends, from before. She always likes to talk, fill the silences. At one time, he might have found it troublesome, but he welcomes it now. He likes watching her talk. He’s a good listener, she says. _You say that like listening is a difficult skill_ , he tells her, and she’ll just smile. It’s calming, tide-like, the way they ebb and flow.

He leans in, slow enough to let her lean away if she wants. She doesn’t. It’s quick, and chaste. Warm. Their breath probably smells bad. It feels right. Is it right? Or is he just searching for a home he lost in the most available person?

“What took you so long?” she asks, and it feels like an answer.

  


* * *

_fin_


End file.
